I've just viewed the recording of Jesse Schell's presentation Visions of the Gamepocalypse for Long Now Foundation. The idea is game is going to advance to a stage that it will blend into everyday life. Game playing will have a lot of implication in the futuristic society. I'm not really a gamer. Still I find it a fantastic talk. It explores many interesting topics around game design that really reveal a lot about our personality and the society.

Jesse raised some ideas I like to take a note here. He identified two category of people, the imagineers v.s. the mundanes. He use a film scene to introduce the concept (the geeks in the movies call themselves imagineers, possibly inspired by Disney). Imagineers are those who often engage in fantasy. They other group are normal people he labels as the mundanes. The mundanes are not appealed by fantasy at all. I find this a rather insightful dimension of people. The other idea is the curiosity wins. In the world full of information, it is people with curiosity who is going to benefit the most. It is because their curiosity drive them to learn new knowledge continuously. Mastering factual knowledge will have lot less importance in the future.

As always, Stewart Brand posts an excellent summary on long now's website.

2010.12.11 [tech, psychology] - comments